Then I got Twitter DM from Charlie at Fulfillrite saying they’d like to do a guest post on this blog. I’d already been researching Fulfillrite and was probably going to use their services on the Highways & Byways campaign for US shipping. I said yes, provided they make a really good educational post. They delivered! In fact, I learned a lot just by reading this before posting it.

In the interest of full disclosure, let’s cover something real quick: they offered me a small discount on services in the Highways & Byways campaign fulfillment. Just telling you that ahead of time so you don’t think I’m hiding secret subliminal marketer messages.

I sent some questions to Charlie Brieger, which are in bold below. What follows are his responses to my questions, edited only for grammar and spelling.

Tell me a little about yourself and about Fulfillrite.

Fulfillrite has a lot in common with its clients, which is why it serves them so exceptionally well.

E-commerce is an industry populated by entrepreneurs. Individuals who value their independence. Individuals willing to take the risks, experience the frustrations, the highs and lows. They’re committed to never quitting. They’re going to see it through to the end until they achieve success.

My brother Joe and I share that entrepreneurial spirit. We always wanted to work for ourselves. I guess it’s in our family DNA to have that entrepreneurial character. Having previous experience with shipping and warehousing, we were disappointed in the level of service we saw in the fulfillment industry. There were many facets of the service we felt could be improved upon. So we established our company, Fulfillrite.

We empathize with the vision and goals of our clients. Our Mission Statement is to help our clients achieve their dream of building a successful e-commerce company. To us, it meant taking apart every part of the business. Breaking it down into its components to see where we can make improvements. We’re always challenging ourselves how we can further help our clients. By being so demanding of ourselves, we have innovated services and developed software that has become the benchmark of the industry. We’ve helped reduce our client’s costs in many ways. We’ve enabled them to enjoy a smooth error-free operation.

All I can say is that the hundreds of testimonials on the web tell our story best. They attest to the fact that we are succeeding in living up to our Mission Statement to help our clients achieve success. To us, it’s the true way of measuring our success.

Generally speaking, what happens between inventory arriving at the warehouse and the customer receiving their goods? What processes are involved in shipping to customers?

You know e-commerce is a business that lives or dies by its customer service. Customer satisfaction is everything. In a way, even though you never see your customer, and most likely never speak to him, the fact is he is looking at you squarely in the eye. That’s because, from his perspective, he’s dealing directly with the company owner. There is no retail middleman. So all of his gripes and complaints fall squarely in the owner’s lap.

It’s no secret that a primary cause for customer dissatisfaction is late delivery. The customer expects it to be there when promised. It may sound simple, but the fact is there are steps that occur between the arrival of the products at the fulfillment warehouse and arrival at the customer’s door. A mishap at any step will often lead to delays in shipping.

I can’t speak for other fulfillment companies. I don’t spend time investigating them. My knowledge comes from when our clients write or call to share their appreciation, and in doing so compare our shipping to other companies in a very exemplary fashion.

The fact is that from the moment we opened our doors we made it a priority that there should be no delay from the time the product arrives at our door until it is shipped to the customer.

Speed and error-free are often contradictory terms. Yet, with fulfillment, they are two equal necessities. To achieve both Fulfillrite has a proprietary computerized pick and pack system. To enable the system to operate properly, a scannable SKU or Barcode is required for logging the product into our system, shelving, packing, labeling, and shipping. With our pick and pack system, orders are ready for shipping almost immediately after arriving at our door. If we receive the shipment before 2 pm, orders can go out the very same day, which is unheard of in the industry.

A simple UPC Barcode goes a long way.

We provide the client with very clear guidelines for inbound receiving. As long as the client follows those guidelines correctly we can have an order ready in and out the door within 2 hours. And, we actually incentivize our clients to follow the guidelines; by doing them so we do not charge any receiving fees, as other fulfillment services do.

A concern for every E-commerce owner is shipping to the wrong address. Often, the first time the owner finds out about the problem is when he hears from an irate customer about not receiving his order. By then the opportunity for a positive image and relationship is almost certainly ruined. At Fulfillrite we prevent delivery to the wrong address by verifying every single address before shipping to assure that its deliverable.

Orders can come in at any time, and customers expect the product to arrive on schedule as promised. So we push the envelope on on-time delivery and have Fulfillrite operational 6 days a week.

The point is we’re constantly looking for ways to enhance our service and live up to our promise to help our clients live up to their promise to build a successful company. There are so many small details that make a difference between success and failure. We’re constantly monitoring our service seeking ways to improve. We’re not afraid to invest money in developing proprietary software, in training our shipping specialists. We work hard on behalf of our clients to negotiate rates from national and local carriers.

Let me be frank. People think all fulfillment requires is to open a warehouse, stock up on packaging materials, connect with a few carriers and you are in business. It doesn’t work that way. To provide clients with maximum advantages and benefits requires a true commitment. The investment in terms of time, effort, hard work, and funds is considerable. There’s no shortcut to becoming the best.

Let me add that another strong reason for our on-time shipping is the professionalism of our shipping specialists. It’s not simply a matter of scotch taping a package and slapping on a label and postage. Our specialists go through a rigorous training process until they are thoroughly familiar with our phase of our fulfillment system. Our proprietary software is the heart of the system, but our staff is the key to making sure every single package is shipped out on schedule. Our specialists are rewarded well with salary and bonuses. They take pride in being the best in the business.

Why is fulfillment through a third party a good idea?

Every businessman is looking to save money, to cut overhead, and save on expenses. E-commerce business owners naturally look at fulfillment as a place to contain costs. The question they ask themselves is why pay an outside service when they can do it themselves?

This is a legitimate question that deserves an answer. Our answer is that there is no one answer for everyone. Each e-commerce owner needs to take a close look at cost of an outside service and his alternative to handle it himself.

All I can do is give your readers the big picture of what is required for fulfillment.

Take product storage as an example. You need to warehouse inventory. One option is to rent space. Right away you have an overhead expense. The other option is to store the inventory on the premises. Very likely this will interfere with other aspects of the business. Let’s face it, having boxes piled here, there and everywhere is not conducive to a smooth running operation.

The next issue is: who is handling the fulfillment? Does the owner have time to spare from all his responsibilities to pack and ship? Probably not. So an employee has to be delegated, quite possibly more than one. That’s another expense. How much training will the employee receive? Warehouse employees are typically at the low end of the wages scale. Odds are they won’t be too professional and motivated. Poor handling of orders can have major repercussions on customer satisfaction. It could even lead to bad online reviews which can be very damaging to a business.

Expenses aren’t the sole criteria. They may not even be the most important criteria. Fulfillment, like any business, requires professional expertise. Negotiating for lower rates with major carriers is no simple matter. It requires an understanding of how carriers evaluate the value of a client. Obviously, a fulfillment service that generates a large volume of business is in an equipped to negotiate lower rates. But there’s more to it than that. Carriers are competitive, fighting each other for business. That too has an effect on rates. Knowing the business from the inside, knowing the high and low range of a carriers pricing structure, allows us to negotiate even lower rates.

And, then there is the power of long-established relationships which transcend the purely business end of the business. Carrier representatives deal more favorably with people they know well and trust on both a professional and personal level. Over the course of many years, Fulfillrite has established very favorable relationships with the major carriers, and Indeed Fulfillrite’s rates are among the very lowest in the industry.

In addition, we provide free padded mailers, which adds up to handsome savings over time depending on volume.

In which cases is fulfillment through a third party not appropriate?

I’d say there are a limited number of situations that preclude working through a fulfillment company. Obviously, I can’t speak for other companies. All I can mention are a few factors that relate to our company. What makes our company so successful, and our clients so satisfied is the insight we bring to the business. We don’t make casual, quick decisions. Everything is carefully thought out as to how we can be more efficient, more cost-effective.

Based on our thinking and experience, Fulfillrite has specific parameters that decide a new client’s acceptability. By the way, that is for their benefit, as well. Companies that don’t meet our parameters won’t benefit from our service. As an example, clients that have fewer than 50 orders a month. Or, clients that have expensive products which require special handling and packaging. Companies that have high SKU counts are difficult to integrate into our system. Same for clients who require custom packaging.

Our focus is on small, lightweight products, typically under 5 pounds, with a minimum volume of 50 orders a month. Our system is designed around this. Everything we do, all the proprietary software we develop, all the unique benefits we provide are built around this clear and very defined understanding of what our core business is. That’s why we’re so effective. Also, high SKU counts, as well as clients that require custom packaging will not meet the parameters. In such situations, in-house fulfillment may serve the client’s need best.

How do you successfully choose a fulfillment service for crowdfunding projects?

For crowdfunding companies, fulfillment is the tail end of their planning. For obvious reasons they are focusing on the product idea, having it manufactured, creating the website. Usually, it’s when all the other aspects are in place do they think about how they are going to get it to the customer.

The best advice we can give crowdfunding companies is do your research. Don’t leap into the business simply because you have an idea for a product. The first question should be is there another product similar to it? The other product doesn’t have to be exactly the same. If there is a product that essentially provides the same benefit in a similar manner, you’re developing a commodity. A commodity is a product or service that is non-distinguishable from other similar products. This means there are other options for the customer to choose from. Usually, when that happens the typical response is to lower prices to be more competitive. So you end up in a price war. It’s a no-brainer that no one ever wins a price war.

Three good places to begin researching whether there is a competitive product are Google, Amazon and Ali Baba. A patent search could prove helpful. A patent attorney can easily charge thousands of dollars. But patent search may prevent serious problems arising in the future that could have serious consequences. Consider this real-life occurrence.

That famous yellow smiley face that you see all over was created at the behest of a large insurance corporation to elevate the spirit of the employees that had suffered through a merger. A graphics designer was hired to come up with a visual concept that would have people smile and feel good. The smiley face was his graphics solution. It caught on and became very popular. Two gentlemen, realizing the concept had never been trademarked, made some slight modifications and trademarked the image. As we’ve seen, the image appears on everything from coffee mugs to t-shirts to posters and school supplies, bedding, stationary you name it. Over the years the two men have earned millions in royalties. The graphic designer who created the concept and image was paid by the insurance company sixty dollars. He never earned a penny more.

Assuming the product concept is fresh and original, the next step is to have a prototype made by a tooling company. The cost of a mold depends on complexity, size, and the raw materials required. There are many factors guiding where the initial prototype should be created, local in the US or overseas. Once the prototype is created, the individual has to find a factory, here or overseas.

He has to decide “is a well-designed package required?” It depends on the product and the retail cost. It should be kept in mind that product packaging is a key branding instrument for e-commerce, since the product typically isn’t seen in stores, or in offline advertising, such as magazines. Packaging could play an important role in the branding positioning and imagery created through the website.

With product manufacturing in hand, the next vital step is to select a fulfillment service. Here too the owner should undertake careful, deep research. Fulfillment plays a critical role in operations. More importantly, fulfillment can be a deciding factor in retaining or losing customers and in profitability. Fulfillment fees and shipping costs do affect the bottom line. On the simplest level, the right fulfillment service will mean a smooth frustration- free integration with his platforms. Knowing that he can rely on his fulfillment partner to provide on-time, error-free shipping allows him to fully focus his energy on building his business without the nightmarish worry of delayed, or lost shipments, and unsatisfied customers.

Here are key factors that should be researched:

Fulfillment costs

Shipping costs: how competitive are the shipping rates negotiated with major carriers, such as FedEx, UPS, USPS, and others. Do they offer truly discounted shipping rates?

Beyond shipping costs, does the service provide very useful information about the arrival time, even the arrival time of day, so the e-commerce owner can make a more comprehensive, in-depth decision.

Does the service system integrate with the e-commerce platforms he is using? How well? Does it integrate with more than one system?

How computerized, and hence simplified, is the order processing? Is there integrated computerized inventory data so the owner knows exactly where the order is in the shipping process?

How are returns handled? Do they go back into inventory, and if so how quickly? And, how quickly is the owner notified so he can make internal inventory adjustments, including placing or not placing future orders from this manufacturer?

How quickly is shipping expedited? Customer satisfaction hinges on as promised arrival.

How professional is the customer service? Does the customer communicate with a personal rep who knows his business inside out, someone he knows he can rely on in all circumstances? Or, is he handed off to the first person who answers the phone, and who is not familiar with, let alone up to date with his business needs and circumstances.

Google should be used to see if there are any reviews regarding the fulfillment service from e-commerce industry sources, as well as current and previous clients.

What sort of fees can be expected?

A fulfillment service’s fees are generally broken down into these 4 main categories:

Then you can also account for the possibility for one-time costs, for example, Special Projects, barcode labeling, shipping boxes if needed, container loading, and other such services, will incur one time fees.

How do custom taxes and VAT work?

The customer receiving the product is responsible to pay for any duties or taxes due upon receipt in the destination country. We are currently looking into the possibility to offer an option that is duties and taxes fully paid before leaving the country

Can you integrate with shopping websites?

Once a client is approved, he is given login access for account set up on the wizard screen where he fills in the details about his account. Once this is completed he can connect to our software via API or supported apps, and be seamlessly connected with his shopping platforms. He can be connected to multiple shopping carts.

As I mentioned at the very beginning, customer satisfaction is the backbone of Fulfillrite, it guides all we do. We pride ourselves on treating each and every customer with the respect and dignity they deserve. Every customer has a personal rep who knows their business who responds to their scheduled calls. The rep knows the details and particulars of their business and so can answer the questions correctly and handle any issue that arises without delay. Plus, on our site customers will find guides and FAQ’s that will answer most of their questions.

To us, customer service means more than being responsive to a customer’s call. It means constantly looking for ways to improve our service. The driving force behind every proprietary software, every innovation is how we serve our customers better.

The testimonials we receive show we’re doing an excellent job. But that won’t stop us from looking how to improve it even more.

It’s no secret that one of the most critical parts of making a board game that will sell is making it gorgeous. Box art alone has the ability to multiply sales of an otherwise unassuming board game. Finding an artist is something that many first-time board game designers find very difficult to do. Finding and taking care of an artist involves multiple expensive business transactions and a product whose quality can never be anything but subjective, so it’s very sensible to be worried.

You don’t have to be worried, though, since I’ve got strong feelings about this subject and I’m here to share everything I’ve learned over the last two years 😉

In this article, I will cover five subjects:

Making your project attractive to artists

Looking for artists

Reaching out to artists

Sealing the deal

Getting the best work out of your artist

Step 1: Make Your Project Attractive to Artists

First things first, 80% of the battle is fought here. If you want to find an artist and get a good deal on money, you need to make your project an attractive prospect. Consider the incentives which artists respond to: pay, exposure, autonomy, and meaning. Pay attention to these things. You want to be a great client.

Pay: Artists make art for a living! That means that when you hire an artist as a freelancer, you need to pay them for their time and effort. For many projects, this will involve shelling out thousands of dollars. Unless you have a personal connection to an artist OR you hire someone very wet behind the ears, you cannot avoid this. By all means, negotiate on price, but don’t be a cheapskate. Since every project is different, you’ll probably want to make an art budget and set aside some cash and get a variety of quotes from different artists. If all the artists’ quotes are not even remotely close to your budget, you’ll have to scale down your art needs or set your sights lower on quality.

Exposure: If you don’t have a lot of money on your hands, you may be able to offer some intangible benefits. For example, if you have a large social media network and you commit to publicizing your artist as much as possible to improve their career prospects, you might be able to pay them less. In fact, this is how I got James Masino to do 300 unique pieces of art for War Co. for a price that I’m frankly embarrassed to disclose. Exposure is not “teehee, I’m on your portfolio which you can put on your website.” Exposure is “I’m swinging the full weight of a network that touches tens of thousands of people to get your name out there.” I did this until he was eventually offered a job for 10 times the pay by someone who was following me on Twitter.

Autonomy: Artists often work alone, especially the sort of freelancers who you might expect to get involved with board game projects. They like to set their own schedules, do work their own way, and be self-directed. Don’t micromanage. Don’t set unrealistic deadlines. Give them a chance to grow their careers as they create your work.

Meaning: People need to feel like their actions mean something. People especially need to feel like the toil they put into their labor is worthwhile and building something great. Look, we make board games. We don’t cure cancer. Yet if you can consistently provide your artist with context that tells them how their work fits into the larger picture and what it means to you personally, they will pick up on that and it will make their work sweeter. That’s so important and so often neglected.

Step 2: Start Looking for Artists

Compared to the above, this is simple. There are three fantastic places I know of where you can find no shortage of talented individuals. They are DeviantArt, Instagram, and Twitter. This is one of the many reasons I think social media is very important for game developers, but to take advantage of these websites to find artists, you don’t even have to be all that active. You can use the search features on all of these websites and start scrolling through work. Start clicking on bios and seeing who is active, available, and looking for work. Make a list of everyone you’re interested in. You’ll probably want about 20 people on that list. Ten won’t get back to you, five won’t be interested, and only one or two of the remaining five will end up being good once you start talking brass tacks.

Finding an artist is the simplest part of getting art on your project, but there are still some pitfalls. Consider whether you want a newbie artist or a veteran artist. Newbie artists are not hard to find and the market has a greater supply than demand, so if you have a good deal of money, you have the upper hand. If you’re looking for a veteran artist, it costs a lot, lot more. That’s the price of consistency, reliability, and a proven track record. If you’re working on a big budget game, by all means, go for a veteran artist. All things equal, I’d personally go with the newbie because their work can parallel veterans with the right instruction. Just be aware that choosing a newbie might save you some cash, but it could lead to low quality art and project delays. I’ve never had to deal with that, but it’s not uncommon and it’s a risk you have to bear.

When you’re looking for artists, make sure you pay attention to the sort of work they’ve done before. If you’re doing a sci-fi game, and all they’ve done is fantasy art, they might not be a good match. It’s still okay to ask, and I recommend that you do, but don’t get your hopes up. Likewise, if all the artist’s work is scenery and machinery, don’t expect them to paint decent looking people. If you have a variety of art styles in your game, you may even consider hiring multiple artists and divvying up the work according to specialty.

Step 3: Reach out to Artists

Once you have a list of artists who you believe would be appropriate for your project, it’s time to start shaking hands. By shaking hands, of course, I mean sending emails. Even though you’re likely finding the artists through social media or DeviantArt, I still strongly suggest you get their email and send them a message that way. If their email is not on their profile or they don’t respond to emails, that’s a red flag. Freelancers should be checking their emails pretty often. Remember what I said above: about half of who you email won’t get back to you, so you can just cross them right off your list.

This is why I email artists to shake hands instead of literally shaking hands.

Let’s say you’ve got your email client up and you’ve got their address in the To box. Oh, but what do you say? Well, I’ll copy and paste my first email to James Masino, the artist for War Co., and we’ll break it down sentence by sentence – all the rights and wrongs. Then I’ll give you a template.

Hi James,

I am working on a trading card game called War Co. It has a sci-fi post-apocalypse theme. I’ve been looking for an artist for a while, and our mutual friend Alex said you might be the right guy to talk to.

I checked out your site and it’s pretty cool! You have an impressive set of skills with a variety of tools that I’ve only played around with for a few hours. I would like to work with you in the future on creating the artwork for my game.

Just to be clear, I’ve never taken on a project of this scale before. I’ve never needed to work with an artist, so I don’t know what the process involves. I’ve got an overall method to my madness as well as a written plan, but there’s a lot of things I’m still working out.

Thank you and looking forward to your reply,

Brandon Rollins
[My Personal Email]
[My Personal Phone Number]

[War Co. Website]

I am working on a trading card game called War Co.I immediately explain the nature of my project. (I changed the genre to “expandable card game” later on, but that didn’t affect art.)

It has a sci-fi post-apocalypse theme. This lets him know what to expect as far as art style.

I’ve been looking for an artist for a while, and our mutual friend Alex said you might be the right guy to talk to. I explain what I’m looking for from him and how I found him.

I checked out your site and it’s pretty cool! You have an impressive set of skills with a variety of tools that I’ve only played around with for a few hours.I explain why I’m reaching out specifically to him and not someone else.

I would like to work with you in the future on creating the artwork for my game. I state again specifically what I’m looking for.

Just to be clear, I’ve never taken on a project of this scale before. I’ve never needed to work with an artist, so I don’t know what the process involves. I’ve got an overall method to my madness as well as a written plan, but there’s a lot of things I’m still working out. I’m torn on how I handled this. I might have tipped my hand a bit too much with what I don’t know. However, if you need the artist to take the lead on setting realistic deadlines, make sure you make that clear.

[Contact Information] I made sure to give him two ways to contact me, as well as a link to the website so he could read more. By then, I already had an enormous amount of information online about the game so he could know what he’s getting into.

You’ll notice that price did not come up at all the first time around. Before you even discuss price, let the artist get back to you and tell you whether or not they’re available and whether or not they’re interested. Very few will get past this stage, and at that point, it is fair to ask about price.

[Say how you found the artist.] [Explain why you like the artist and reached out to them.] [Reiterate that you’re looking for game art.]

[Give a rough overview of your game as a project.]

Thank you and looking forward to your reply,

[Your First and Last Name]
[Your Email]
[Your Phone Number]

[Your Website]

Step 4: Seal the Deal with the Artists

At this point, you’ll soon find yourself in a discussion about payment amounts and schedules, contracts, and royalties. I cannot give you templates to get through this phase. You’ll have to rely on your own good judgment. However, there are some tips which I strongly suggest you follow.

Make sure you get a contract. Make sure it’s clear and make sure you both sign and date it. Notarize it if you feel the need.

When it comes to price, you have some negotiation room. However, if it’s way out of your budget, you’ll simply have to walk.

Make sure the art is made on a “work for hire” basis. That means upon payment, you become the copyright holder – not the artist. This is so, so important!

If you offer a royalty, I’d suggest between 2-5% split between all artists involved in the game. I’d also suggest making the royalty apply only to sales after Kickstarter and pre-orders. Applying a royalty fee to the tender early state of your fundraising could really hurt you in terms of cash flow. Offering more than 5% could also really hurt you in the long-run because there are so many factors that go into getting a game published.

Set schedules and milestones for when certain parts of the art will be done. Adjust them as necessary if they turn out to be unrealistic, but have a spine if you find out you’re being played by a procrastinator.

This is hard to do right. Make sure you communicate very clearly and stay focused on the needs of everyone involved.

Step 5: Get the Best Work out of Your Artist

Once you start discussing money and contracts, you’ve already succeeded. Yet if you really want to take your art up to the next level, you don’t just have to depend on your artist. You have a pretty solid amount of influence as the game developer. Indeed, you can push a good artist to make great art by doing three things:

Be completely straightforward about your business needs and intentions.

Be as specific as possible when providing art directions.

Provide instructions that are consistent with good marketing practices.

You want your artist’s trust. Game development is a long, winding journey and a single game will almost certainly not make you rich. You want to focus on developing good relationships, so you need to be really straightforward and honest with your artist about where your business is, where you expect to go with it, and how much you can afford. It takes time to develop an instinct for this, but if you keep this all in mind and keep trying, you will figure it out. You want long-term contacts. Artists know other artists.

Regarding art directions: the more detailed you can be, the better. You want to strike a balance between giving your artist freedom and giving them direction. You want rework to be minimal, because that is absolutely exhausting for an artist. When you provide those directions, make sure you provide directions that make art pop on the shelf. This is hard to explain, but I’ll just show you what I said to James.

Narrative Themes:

This game’s story is about corruption, bureaucracy, conflicts of interest, group psychology, war, trauma, resilience, hope, and pyrrhic victories. Sometimes it’s about the mundane application of high-flying technology, sometimes it’s about disappointment, sometimes it’s about miscommunication. There’s a ton of themes, and I made no effort to stick to one. I picked slices of a complicated world to throw on the floor with no rhyme or reason. Every person will make their own narrative. I’d argue traditional media like novels and films work the same way. I’m just being more blunt about it. Each card has its own theme, basically.

Visual Themes:

From a business and game perspective, there’s one thing I’m trying to ensure in this game that I don’t see anywhere else: simplicity. Trading card games are nerd territory because they’re complicated. Superheroes used to be in the same boat before the turn of the century. When drawing pictures, be conservative about your level of detail. I’d like it to be sharp, snappy, and to leave an immediate impression. That doesn’t mean you can’t make large hulking ships with baroque levels of detail…it just means pay very close attention to how the viewer’s eye will be directed. Whether this translates into photorealism or simplified/smoothed-out reality, I leave to your better judgement. User-friendliness is how I plan on playing alongside the big kids like Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Pokemon TCG.

I’m trying really hard to avoid the stereotypical annoying client “make it pop” speech, so I’ll use a visual example.

I’ll use Mad Max: Fury Road. That movie was fantastic! Here’s some things I like about the picture below:

It’s clearly violent and post-apocalyptic, but it’s also bright and colorful. Too many people associate “apocalypse” and “gray/desaturated.” I think that trope is cliché.

The most important details are up-front, immediate, visible, and I’d even say “right up in your face.” Once you process the immediate part, then you can say “oh wow, there’s actually a lot going on here. Who’s behind him? What’s with the fire? Look at his gross neck sweat!” and so on.

We had some further conversation in next few emails and he said that he really appreciated these instructions. What you don’t see is that I had about a 200-300 word story for each piece of art, but otherwise left it up to interpretation. James’ response to these instructions was to create art like the following, which has been praised as a strong point of the game by nearly every review of War Co.

Key Takeways for Game Devs

The most important part is making your project attractive to artists.

Pay your artists as well as you can.

If you have a large online following, do everything you can to promote your artist – especially if your pay is low.

Respect your artist’s need for self-direction.

Give your artist context to know how their work fits into the larger picture.

Find artists on DeviantArt, Instagram, and Twitter.

Make a list of 20 artists who you like.

Think about whether to hire a newbie or a veteran artist – both have advantages and disadvantages.

Make sure you find an artist who is experienced and interested in the themes and styles you’ll need for your game.

Send a polite email to all the artists on your list. See my template in section 3.

Use good judgment when you’re committing to an artist.

Get a contract.

Negotiate some, but don’t be a cheapskate.

MAKE SURE THE ART IS DONE ON A WORK FOR HIRE BASIS!

Offer a royalty that is no greater than 5% split between all artists.

Set schedules and milestones for when parts of the art will be done. Adjust as needed.

Communicate very clearly and stay focused on the needs of everyone involved.

Give specific art directions that have marketing in mind.

Be good to your artist. You need long-term contacts. Artists know artists.

I am thrilled that many of you enjoyed Setting Up Social Media as a Board Game Dev: A Primer Course. Marketing is a big concern for game developers, especially in the chaotic arena of social media. Sites like Twitter and Instagram provide some of the biggest and most accessible ways to attract an audience, even while they’re still mysterious and new.

Any board game developer can gradually develop a large, engaged, authentic Twitter following with a little bit of ongoing effort. Twitter is an effective marketing tool that can increase the visibility of new board game developers, especially for Kickstarter. Twitter can also provide a wealth of information on several different aspects of the board game industry, with applications including idea testing, market research, making connections with influential individuals, and trend analysis.

This guide is going to be very detailed. It will be the longest article I’ve ever made. There’s lots of blog articles about building a Twitter following, but I think they’re largely half-baked. I want to see you build your account organically into the thousands. (Perhaps you’ll spare a retweet for a blogger you like…)

I’ve broken this up into six sections. Feel free to skip around, but whether you’re new to Twitter or not, I encourage you to read section 1. It’s always good to keep your endgame in mind.

What is Twitter Good For?

Reasons to Use Twitter

Before getting into any time-consuming commitment, it’s always smart to ask yourself “why am I doing this?” Twitter can provide a great deal of visibility and it can be an excellent marketing tool for board game developers. The effect can be profound and a well-run Twitter account can bring in thousands of dollars, as long as you’ve got a good business model to make money once you get people’s attention. Getting people’s attention is only the beginning, though, since your behavior on Twitter has to make your audience care. We’ll get to that in the next section.

There are a lot of benefits to using Twitter that no one talks about. These benefits include the ability to test ideas, do market research, connect with leaders, and keep up with industry trends. Think long and hard about your goals before you start your Twitter. The more specific they are, the better. Your goals determine how you’ll be using Twitter. The more in line your behavior with your goals, the better.

Reasons not to Use Twitter

Building a Twitter following with a lot of real, engaged people is a slow process. You won’t get big quick. If you do get big, that doesn’t mean you’ll make a bunch of money either. There’s a handy model called AIDA. It’s well-recognized by both marketers and Glengarry Glen Ross aficionados.

AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. When you’re a marketer, the first thing you need to do is get people to know you exist – attention. Then you have to make people care about your game – interest. If they start to want your game, that’s a good sign – desire. Next, they get on your website or Amazon with the intention to buy – action.

Marketing is a slow dance. You have to very slowly build your reputation. Twitter is great because it lets new developers draw attention to themselves with fewer barriers than ever before. But it’s still a long, slow climb from Attention to Action. You have to have a great game, a great website, a good business case, and so on. You can’t tweet yourself to the Top 100 on Board Game Geek. Trust me, I tried.

There’s another really compelling reason not to use Twitter: the community. I generally find Twitter to be a place full of beauty, humor, and rapier wit, but I’m also very particular about what I read there. The Twitter community can be exhausting. Know what you’re getting into. There are a lot of narcissists, a lot of people oversharing banal stories of their lives, and a lot of people browbeating others over politics (even if you voted for the same person). If this will make you miserable, you will probably get more enjoyment out of a different social media outlet.

Getting Started

Setting Up Your Account & Making it Look Good

So you’ve decided you want to take the plunge and get a Twitter? Awesome! There are six things you need to do be ready to do right after you get on the site:

Register

Pick a handle

Pick a display name

Write your bio

Set a profile photo

Set a header photo

I won’t get into the details of where to go and what to click. Twitter could very well change that in the near future and I want this guide to have staying power. So with that in mind, I advise you to stick by a few principles:

Unless you’re representing a full studio, go by your name. People connect way better with me as Brandon Rollins than they do with me as Pangea Games.

Put your face on your profile photo. In my experience are about 2-3x more likely to follow a face than a logo.

Keep your bio to the point. Don’t try to be too clever. Just explain who you are, and possibly incorporate some humor. Here are the bios I use:

BrandonGameDev bio: Board game development is a wild, meandering journey. We’re in this together. Made @WarMachinesCo, making @BywaysGame. I own and run Pangea Games.

WarMachinesCo bio: Creator of War Co., a card game funded on Kickstarter, which is on sale now. I pretend to be a scary corporation in my spare time. Other Twitter @BrandonGameDev

BywaysGame bio: Creating Highways & Byways, a board game about the road trip of a lifetime. Based on real places you can go! I’m @BrandonGameDev, creator of @WarMachinesCo.

In general, be as human as possible and make it clear that you’re a board game developer. A little bit of clarity and little bit of genuineness go a long way on this platform.

The First Two Weeks (Of Your Account or Your Strategy)

In your first two weeks, you don’t want to focus on followers. It’s too soon. You’ve got two main responsibilities.

Create a few Twitter lists and follow people you’re genuinely interested in. They don’t even have to be related to board games. Add each person you follow to a Twitter list. When you want to check Twitter, check these lists. This will help you keep your Twitter organized and enjoyable while you’re heavily promoting your account.

I love my Twitter lists.

With listening on lock, now you’ve got to figure out what you want to say! There are a lot of factors to consider if you want to represent yourself well on Twitter.

The first is what I call Content Mix. This is comprised of three different forms of communication: sharing, talking, and self-promotion. Sharing involves retweeting others’ tweets when they speak to you, or alternatively, finding cool stuff online that’s worth bringing up in conversation. Talking is simply hanging out and passing time. Self-promotion is self-explanatory. However, relentless self-promotion will make you look dumb. Failure to self-promote at all will give you very few benefits because no one will know what you do. You have strike a balance.

I suggest taking a 5/3/2 approach. For every 10 tweets, 5 should be sharing others’ work, 3 should be conversational, and 2 should be self-promoting. Naturally, you’ll want to tweak this to what your audience responds to. As for what specifically to say and share, watch what other successful tweeters do. Copy the things they do that you like, but make sure you do so in your own words. As time passes, you will find your own voice.

One last thing: try to post at times when people are online. I’ve noticed a lot of my audience is online around 11 am to 1 pm US Eastern Time. Play it by ear, see what works for you and your audience.

Getting Noticed

Growing a Following – Different Tactics

Curating and creating great tweets go a long way toward making a viable marketing strategy on Twitter. Reading other people’s stuff will keep you in touch with the community and provide you with opportunities to retweet others. Your own tweets will provide a great way for people to find you and get to know you. There’s just one issue. People won’t reach out to you first on Twitter – you have to take the initiative.

Having great content is half the battle. You’ve also got to make conscious efforts to gain followers. There are a lot of ways to do this. Some of them are clean, some of them are dirty, and many are in between. I’ll cover all of them.

Clean Ways to Gain Followers

Let’s talk about some clean ways to gain followers first. The most obvious way is simply to post great tweets. Follow the advice above and iterate until you find the right wording for your audience. This approach is excellent at building your brand and it helps people get to know who you are and how you think. However, it’s a little weak on outreach. You can’t simply make great tweets and expect people to show up.

A more direct way to get people’s attention on Twitter is to start liking and replying to tweets that you see on your feed. Twitter is just about the only place in the world where it’s not rude to butt into a conversation that doesn’t involve you. In fact, that’s much of the magic of the platform and why it’s so great for building a robust network. Replying to tweets on Twitter is the most reliable way I’ve seen to get dedicated fans. However, this is time-consuming as hell and it requires you to be constantly “on” and conversational.

A lot of people know Twitter for its #hashtags. Simply appending that odd little # symbol makes the words following the symbol searchable on Twitter. It’s very easy to use hashtags, but it’s very hard to find hashtags that get real attention. If you use the right hashtag (such as a trending tag on the left side of the page), you might have a tweet blow up and get really big. If you use hashtags, try to work them into a sentence and not just stick them at the end of the tweet. And for the love of humanity, don’t use more than three in a tweet – that’s a surefire way to make folks cringe.

Trending tags

Lastly, you can use advertising to promote your Twitter. With advertising, you can practically guarantee a certain number of retweets, likes, website clicks, or views. Advertising is really hands-off, but also expensive.You also will have to target your ads exceptionally well to your audience, with particular attention being paid to optimizing them. If you’re going to be shelling out the hundreds of dollars it takes to run a good campaign, you want your words to be actionable and your images to be clickable. That means you should probably test your ads on a test audience or focus group before you put them out there.

Dirty Ways to Gain Followers

Twitter is not always a place of honor. I strongly discourage you from using either of these two tactics for growing your following. Think of me like your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. I’m teaching you evil ways to game the system because you should know they exist.

There are a number of services which promise to grow your Twitter following fast through complete automation. That means these services take your Twitter credentials and indiscriminately follow people in massive numbers. Do not use automatic mass following. Though it will get you a lot of followers very fast for low effort, it’s spammy, your followers will be low quality, and you can get banned for the practice.

Likewise, you can also outright buy followers on websites such as Fiverr. Do not directly buy followers through any means other than Twitter advertising. Though you can get truly massive amounts of followers (even in the thousands) within days, most of the accounts will be fake or at least low quality. Again, this is spammy and it costs money.

“You wanna buy followers, do ya?”

The Gray Areas

Obviously, not every action you can take on Twitter to gain followers falls within the strict dichotomy of “clean” or “dirty.” I know of, and admittedly have used in the past, many techniques that fall within a gray area. If you choose to use these tactics, do so wisely and within an understanding of the pitfalls.

The first gray area is more a method of retaining followers than gaining them. Many people follow everyone who follows them and unfollow everyone who unfollows them. This is not a bad tactic early on, but it’s a little gross. You wind up keeping your numbers up, but many of those folks will be spammers or people who will wind up unfollowing you two weeks later. Keeping your follower number high has significant benefits, but don’t expect followbacks to gain you an engaged audience. It just stops you from bleeding followers.

Indiscriminate following back is a light gray area in my opinion. This next one is a little darker: targeted manual mass following.

One way to get a lot followers is to follow a lot of people. You don’t want to follow people completely indiscriminately, because that will get you low quality followers. Instead, you can use Twitter’s suggestions to follow many people you think fall into your target audience. You can also look at the followers of other accounts that are similar to yours and start following their followers.

Targeted manual mass following gets a lot of followers, but there are a lot of drawbacks. While it is true that follower growth is quick and you can often make genuine friends in the process, it’s kind of spammy if you aren’t really careful about it. It’s annoying to Twitter users. You have to periodically unfollow a lot of people if they’re not following back. You’ll probably get blocked a lot. You might follow the same person multiple times. You might get some angry DMs every once in a while. It’s extremely time-consuming, too. You can even get banned or suspended if you go way overboard, such as following over 300 accounts per day everyday.

I don’t like targeted manual mass followings, but the truth is simple: it works and you’ll make friends. Even still, I don’t recommend it. It’s very common practice, though, and you should know it exists and make up your mind about whether or not you want to do it.

Refining Your Approach

Automating Your Tweets: Ongoing

You can’t automate relationship building. You can’t automate making genuine, heartfelt connections with others. You can, however, automate the tweets which you broadcast to the whole world. I strongly suggest you use Hootsuite to prepare tweets in advance.This free software lets you schedule tweets so that they automatically post when you’re not around. Basically, you can log onto Hootsuite every week or two, come up with a bunch of tweets, and pick the optimal time to post them. You don’t have to be tied to your phone.

You should still check Twitter on a regular basis. It’s still a good idea to converse with others. Automation will allow you to have some constant presence at all times, even when you’re at work, with your kids, or on vacation.

Refining Your Account: Ongoing

Automating tweets will also free up time for you to start refining your tweets. After a month or two of tweeting, you’ll be able to make good use of Twitter Analytics – a robust data-gathering system that comes automatically with Twitter. Figure out what people retweet and like and post more of it. As you refine your approach, you’ll get followers more automatically and less manually.

Twitter Analytics provides a really handy way of finding out what people like.

You’ll also want to periodically go through your followings and unfollow people. A lot of people obsess over their “following-to-follower ratio.” It’s overrated in my opinion. In general, you want to follow fewer people than you follow. In the first six months, don’t sweat this. Just make sure it’s not a ridiculous gap like 2,500 following to 400 followers. If it’s 2,100 following to 1,800 followers, that’s fine. After six to nine months, you want to make sure you always have more people following you than you follow. Once you break about 5,000 followers, then it’s different. No matter how big you get, you don’t want to follow more than a few thousand people.

At first, just get rid of inactive accounts, spammers, and anyone who doesn’t speak your language. After a little while longer, you can start unfollowing people who don’t contribute much to your Twitter experience. There are a lot of automated services that can help you with unfollowing, such as ManageFlitter. No matter what you use, though, you’ll want to go slow. If you try to be Speed Racer about unfollowing, you’ll get banhammered by the big birds up top.

Using Twitter for More than Just Tweeting

There are all sorts of things you can use Twitter for that go beyond the typical purview of marketing. I won’t get too into detail about the tactics you would use, but I do want to get the wheels in your head spinning. I want you to see the potential and have some possible ideas for how to use Twitter which you can Google later on.

Testing Ideas

Twitter is a really great place to test ideas. With a sufficiently large and engaged following, you can ask questions such as “do you prefer a tracker card or d20 to keep track of points?” You can show two pieces of art and ask your followers what they like better. You can do sophisticated A/B testing on Twitter. If you take the initiative to form good questions and make it easy for people to answer them, you will open yourself up to an enormous wealth of data about the market-worthiness of your ideas.

Marketing is a science – lots of testing and research.

Market Research

You can use Twitter for more than just testing your own ideas, though. You can read through the tweets of gamers get a feel for what they would like to see in a game, especially if you have them in a list. You can find your target audience, learn about their interests and desires, and observe the way they interact with each other. This is enormously powerful information if you wield it in the right way. Marketers of the bygone century would have done many bad deeds to have access to what we have access to. If you want to get really formal about your market research, you can even start tracking tweets in Excel and do heavier data analysis there.

Trend Analysis

What games are hot? What games are not? Market research can teach you about the small picture, but I’d say that trend analysis is more about the big picture. You can get a feel for how board gamers as a large group think and act. Though trends may not affect your prospective customers’ thoughts, feelings, and actions directly, you can bet that they change the climate in which they have those thoughts and feelings and make their actions. Twitter is known for being a great thermometer for trending topics. Learn how to read that thermometer.

Making Connections

This should go without saying, but so many people miss this critical point of Twitter. Twitter is not about gaining followers, it’s about making connections. You’ll meet all sorts of people online – game devs of different genres, gamers, creatives of all types, podcasters, bloggers, artists, and so on and so on. Talk to them! Make connections! Start up a conversation and perhaps even DM them. Making connections is so important that I spent weeks getting ready to launch a game dev Discord group. I compiled a big list of people who I was already talking to who might be interested in the group and started systematically inviting them.

Connections are where the money is made, too. Broadcasting to a wide audience won’t get a whole lot of attention. It’s like being a street preacher. Yet if you start talking to individuals on a one-on-one basis, you’re far more likely to get Kickstarter backers, if that’s the road you decide to take in your game development. The trick – if you want to call it a trick – is to genuinely converse and genuinely care.

Go make some connections!

Key Takeaways for Game Devs

Reasons to use Twitter: great visibility, great marketing, idea testing, market research, trend analysis, making connections.

Reasons not to use Twitter: you won’t get rich quick and the community has some annoying quirks.

When setting up your Twitter account: register, pick a handle and display name, write a good bio, set your profile and header photos.

In the first two weeks of tweeting: make Twitter lists and start posting good content (with the right mix of sharing, talking, and self-promotion).